HARD - Conflict between SCSI and SATA controllers!

[RogerX]

I'm reasonably sure SuperMicro, Highpoint, and Adaptec are not going to be able to help me with this one, so perhaps one of you has seen something similar? :) Thanks in advance!

Background: Building a server at home, based on two key products:

Supermicro motherboard - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/GC-LE/X5DL8-GG.cfm
Highpoint SATA RAID controller - http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr2220.htm

If it matters: Hard drives are eight 320GB Western Digital SATA-II drives.
(Other parts include 2GB registered DDR and dual 2.8GHz Xeons.)

I'm using two small SCSI disks as boot devices, preferably RAID 1 mirroring, and want to keep all of the apps/data on the SATA array.

Both the onboard Adaptec SCSI controller on the motherboard and the Highpoint SATA card have a BIOS config prompt at startup. I can get in and configure the devices on either. I have loaded the OS on the SCSI disks and booted successfully. However, as soon as I create an array with any of the disks connected to the SATA controller, the server hangs before booting the OS. Just a black screen. If I break the SATA array, it boots from SCSI disks normally into the OS.

I have confirmed in the motherboard's BIOS that it identifies the SCSI disks as hard disks available for boot (it does.) It also shows the SATA array (if one is created) in the list of hard drives, and you can demote it to a lower boot priority. Changing boot priority does not change the freeze at black screen before the OS loads.

On the SCSI side, I took two discrete PCI SCSI RAID cards (Compaq SmartArray 431 and SmartArray 2 series) and tried them instead of the onboard SCSI (SCSI device on motherboard disabled by jumper). With the same unfortunate result - apparent contention between the SCSI card and the SATA card both wanting to be the boot device, regardless of the motherboard bios settings for boot order.

I have moved the SATA and SCSI cards around the various PCI slots with no change in behavior.

The mother board has the latest bios, and there is one slightly newer revision of bios for the SATA controller, which claims to support newer hard drives but lists no other changes. I may try that upgrade just to be sure.

Can anyone help me on this one, or am I going to just have to switch to an IDE boot device and reload my OS? :)

Thanks again!

[RogerX]

Already got one reply.... try changing the boot.ini for Server 2003 (my OS, yes it's retail box I got as part of an MS promotion) as the controller numbering order may be changing.

I'll try that when I get home.

[RogerX]

I'm posting this doozy just for the collective wisom of the group:
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Well I learned something today. "INT13" is apparently the methodology that add-on controllers use to hook into the BIOS to provide their availability as boot devices. Squirreled away on the driver CD with the card is a poorly documented utility that lets you modify BIOS options that are not otherwise accessible to the user. Among these is the ability to disable INT13 support, as described in the readme with the bios modification utility:

INT13 - The card's boot function. Disabling this feature removess the card's ability to boot the system. This may be useful for systems that utilize multiple bootable controllers - some motherboards may not be able to load the BIOS of each device during bootup, which may impair the system's ability to boot from a specific device.

Apparent both cards were trying to load their BIOS via INT13, causing the lock before it even hit the bootloader!

Have a nice weekend!